Harvest Helper

Could an animal/production pen be highlighted so that it is easy to tell which ones need feed/water/animals? When using the harvest helper where the pens are automatically filled by the click of a button a person may not realize that they are out of a type of feed or do not have sufficient animals for that stall.

I posted the above suggestion before (April 2015) and received no response or comments so maybe my question wasn't understood.

When you have a pen/stable on your farm and you feed it the tray fills with feed and looks yellow and when you water them the container turns blue to indicate it has water. This is fine when you have one pen/stable. When your entire field contains pens/stables it makes it difficult to determine whether they have feed or water by the color. This is especially true when you use the harvester and everything is done at once.

 

GREAT idea!!! In fact, I posted an almost identical suggestion earlier (did not even see yours when you posted it, though).

For crops, you go into the "one click" , or speed click mode or whatever they call it and you can easily see if fields are watered, even fertilized or not. The whole block changes color. It makes it not just easier to water, but also easy to check and make sure you have not forgotten. (yes, there are those triangles, but they, too are small). Those feed and water troughs in the pens and workshops are just too small for these old eyes to see!

One added note, if you do this, please make sure the color is distinct. For crop water, I would like to see a color not quite so close to the lilies (blue, for example, instead of green for water), but that is currently the only regular crop that is tricky
(occasionally event crops also match the color, but not often). Pens don't have the color variety, so they should be easier in that regard. Almost any color would do.

 

I know that when you are out of feed a message flashes, but what if you are out of more than one type and what if some of your fields received feed/water and others didn't and you didn't notice which ones. There has to be an easier way to tell which need food/water. Sometimes you can't even see the white exclamation triangle because the pen is blocked by another pen or tree.
Maybe a dimmer switch until they are fed and watered. Similar to how it looks before manure is removed.

 

I am fortunate enough to have the harvester but when I do hand harvest (i.e. if I only want to harvest part of a field for some reason) I go down the route of doing all of one pen at a time. ie. Harvest, manure, feed, then water. I then move onto the next pen and repeat. Another alternative is to Harvest all the pens, then work round the field to manure, feed and water after each one in turn after. That way you can see which ones need doing. If you find it difficult to see the white exclamation triangle, perhaps it is time to move some pens or turn some round. (you can rotate them which does solve some problems)

 

I'm not disagreeing with the suggestion just noting that something similar already happens. When you are out of feed it does already highlight and flash the stall it's just really subtle so if your not paying attention you can miss it quite easily. Does the same thing when you are out of water or fertilizer for crops it's just easier to see there. Also if you happen to have your sound effects on and try to water without feeding first you will get a sound indicating that you can't water and again flashing stalls. One reason I keep the sound effects on is as a double checking device via sound.

Might be easier to see if the harvester helper wasn't sitting in the middle of the screen blocking half the field.